So, not particularly relevant to this strip in particular, but I’ve been thinking about the whole Walky-suddenly-acting-like-a-stereotypical-girl thing. And it occurs to me that Joyce isn’t mirroring that. She’s having issues with her biology suddenly swapping polarity, but she’s not going around belching and scratching herself and yelling about sportsball.

Walky’s gender identity has always been a very performative thing. We see more of this in DoA, where, for example, he insists that he can’t own more than one pair of shoes because he’s a dude, and even Joe is like, “What the hell? I own like half a dozen pairs.” And I think that’s because, as Joe suggests there, Walky isn’t as secure in his masculinity as he pretends, so to compensate he’s very vocal about how very, very masculine he is.

So, basically, if we want to give Past Willis the benefit of the doubt about this thing, it’s not that getting sex-swapped has made Walky suddenly want to be pretty and wear dresses and have Joe grab his ass… it’s that he’s always wanted to be pretty and wear dresses and have Joe grab his ass, and he feels that the sex swap gives him permission, or at least plausible deniability, for expressing things that don’t fit into his stereotypical masculine gender performance.

That’s an interesting take and I can totally see it. Though, it’s a question of how much he’s actually interested in the feminine things, versus how much he just feels like he has to live up to whichever set of stereotypes he thinks he’s supposed to- what he truly wants seems a bit obscured behind the drive to posture.

Ah! Yes, thank you. I tried to say something along these lines a bit ago and didn’t do so nearly so well (and entirely lacking evidence from DoA – I’d almost entirely forgotten that scene, great catch).
But yeah, Joyce demonstrates that much of what Walky is doing is likely performance (either previously, currently, or both) because she seems mostly normal.